Art & Design

‘October 18, 1977’

June 27, 2013

Art in Review

By KAREN ROSENBERG

Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert 524 West 19th Street, Chelsea

Through July 19

Taking Gerhard Richter’s shadowy 15-painting cycle about the imprisonment and demise of the Baader-Meinhof gang, a 1970s West German terrorist group, as inspiration, this group show stands out from the breezier summer fare elsewhere in Chelsea.

The curator Birgit Rathsmann and the artists she has commissioned have their work cut out for them: Mr. Richter’s project is not only a bellwether of conceptual painting, but also probably the best art ever made about terrorism. Inevitably, the responses include some cowed reworkings of major images. (Neil Bender and Jochen Plogsties both choose “Dead,” a painting of Ulrike Meinhof’s supine head, while Jessica Mein and Daniel Rich gravitate toward the crime-scene shot “Arrest.”)

And a few artists speak directly to Ms. Rathsmann, who asks what the Baader-Meinhof episode might mean “to artists in another country gripped by fear of radical terrorists, albeit a generation removed and an ocean away.” David Lukowski contributes a bulging, unattended backpack, which turns out to be stuffed with onions; evoking crowdsourced videos rather than the stills that inspired Mr. Richter, it suggests that artists confronting terror today may need to look beyond history painting.